Why Paradigm for Parity® Coalition CEOs Are Committed to Closing the Gender Gap

Although women in the United States make up close to half (47%) of the total labor force, they still only represent 21% of corporate leadership roles in the U.S. The Paradigm for Parity® coalition was created to thoughtfully address this imbalance and help companies advance more women to leadership positions.

As we celebrate the two year anniversary of the Paradigm for Parity® coalition, we are gratified that CEOs from 92 companies have joined our movement and committed to follow the coalition’s 5-Point Action Plan to achieve parity in leadership by 2030.

Today, we are excited to release a new video series featuring CEOs sharing the importance of closing the gender gap to their company. The series, which is titled CEOs Leading the Charge to Close the Gender Gap, also showcases what steps companies are taking to give women and men equal power, status and opportunity.

Here is a sample of what the CEOs said:

Pierre Nanterme, Chairman & CEO of Accenture: “Inclusion and diversity are essential to the way we do business. When companies bring together people of different genders, races, cultures and perspectives, we are smarter, more creative, more innovative and more relevant.”

Nicholas Akins, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of American Electric Power: ”Sponsorship means you’re really focusing on being engaged in your career and career development and looking at specific steps along the way where they can continue to expand within the organization. So very pleased to have that kind of process in place. We also focus on placement of females and minorities in the organization.”

Brian Moynihan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of America: “Ultimately you’ve got to just make the decision that you’re going to have parity in the highest ranks and drive towards it.”

Don Baer, Chairman of BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe): “We have mandatory unconscious bias training for everyone so every person who comes into this organization from the moment they come in is required to take that training so that they understand the kind of organization that we aim to be.”

Ann Drake, CEO of DSC Logistics: “Getting more women in leadership positions is really all about better results.”

Pedro Pizarro, President and Chief Executive Officer of Edison International: “At the end of the day, the most important thing we can offer is my commitment and the commitment of all of our leaders to really help make our talented women successful in our workplace.”

Mike Lamach, Chairman and CEO of Ingersoll Rand: “We’re taking a number of steps to close the gender gap. A couple that come to mind, one in particular is a women’s leadership program that we put in place a couple of years ago and began to pull together high performing, talented women across the company into a global cohort and accelerate that development, accelerate that training, providing mentorship and opportunities to create both visibility and a network across this high performing talented group of women, leaders across the company.”

Denise Pirrotti Hummel, J.D. Founder, Lead Inclusively, Inc.: “I can think of no other more important endeavor than to band together with other like-minded CEOs who are making the agenda of gender parity a primary focus in their talent plans for the future.”

Bill McDermott, Chief Executive Officer of SAP: “We’re using machine learning as a tool to make sure that there is no bias in the hiring process.”

John Haley, Chief Executive Officer of Willis Towers Watson: “As we move forward to change the norm what we have to overcome is unconscious gender bias. One of the things we’ve done at Willis Towers Watson is to have an extensive training program that addresses unconscious bias, makes our managers and our colleagues aware of it and helps them address it in their daily life.”